UK report on AI holds back on regulation

Nine months after the UK government commissioned an independent review into artificial intelligence (AI), the authors have revealed their findings, reports Wired. “The major recommendations are that AI and its applications shouldn’t be subject to direct regulation, but an AI council should oversee the industry.” The report is described as a major review into the development of AI in the UK. After speaking to more than 100 experts, the authors, Jérôme Pesenti, from BenevolentAI, and Wendy Hall, a computer scientist at the University of Southampton, say there should be greater training and access to data if the UK is going to compete with other countries around the world on AI. The proposed AI council, the report's authors argue, should “operate as a strategic oversight group” and allow for discussions around “fairness, transparency, accountability and diversity”. By not recommending regulation of AI technologies, the report goes against recent calls from the likes of Elon Musk to introduce more checks and measures. “Elsewhere within the review's 18 recommendations, the authors argue there should be a framework created to explain how decisions are made by AI systems. This should be created by the data protection regulator, and should seek to outline how processes and AI services work. Academics working within machine learning have expressed concerns that the systems are ‘black boxes’ that come to decisions that can’t be explained. The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will also place more transparency obligations on businesses.” The report also says that data trusts should be created. These would create a body to advise on how data used for training AI systems is handled. See more and the read the report here

Tuesday, 17 October 2017

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